Thomas MacKay wrote:
> In addition, I have yet to hear anyone stating "facts", which are really
> irrelevant to this conversation. Mostly the problem had to do with
> definitions - which are quite different from facts. And when you are
> defining emotional things, you have got to expect emotional responses. You
> can't say "we are talking *about* emotions" without experiencing (or having
> experienced) them.
I think I agree with you, Thomas. Americans looking for their Celtic roots
is a much different thing from defining emotional things, I think. In
fact, having a "Celtic experience" is also going to be a stretch for
people who might have discovered this connection after becoming adults.
I'm reminded of another discussion I was in the other day. It seems
that many African-Americans are being rebuffed (as African) by African-
Africans. They're being told that they are Americans, and not African.
In some of the same ways that Americans trying to find their Celtic
heritage are up against unanswered questions about that history,
African-Americans have also lost their history. So they're making it
up -- just as American-Celticists are -- making it up with Some historic
background, and some imagination (Nice American characteristic, that.)
And we think we have a Right to do that (freedom of choice) -- also
an American heritage.
I think the definition of "Celtic" is in transition, and the academics
and historians who Insist on its so-far agreed-upon definitions are
being challenged at the moment. Who decided those definitions, anyway?
Without geographic boundaries, the sky's the limit :)
Ellen Sinatra
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